Annie Jacobsen

Jane Finlay-Young

Di Brandt

This is the story of Lexi, a young Mennonite woman from Saskatchewan, who comes to work as housekeeper and nanny for a doctor's family in Kitchener, Ontario, during the Depression. Dr. Gerald Oliver is a handsome philanderer who lives with his neurotic wife, Cammy, an alcoholic, and their two demanding but affectionate children. Lexi soon adapts to modern conveniences such as running water, wringer washing machines, and Hoovers. She wears expensive clothes cast off by Cammy and is transformed from an innocent into a chic urban beauty. Her world explodes open in her new surroundings, and when Lexi is called home to Saskatchewan to care for her dying mother, she returns a changed person. While caring for her own family, Lexi finds a diary written by her older brother during the family's journey from Russia to Canada. In it she reads of a tragedy kept secret for years, one that reconciles her early memories of her mother as joyful and loving with the burdened woman she became in Canada. Lexi returns to Kitchener, where a crisis of her own, coupled with the knowledge of this secret, serves as the catalyst for her realisation that, unlike her mother, she must create her own destiny. "Watermelon Syrup" is a classic bildungsroman: the tale of a naive young woman at the crossroads of a traditional, restrictive world and a modern one with its freedom, risks, and responsibilities.

A Novel

Watermelon Syrup

Lexi, a young Mennonite woman from Saskatchewan, comes to work as housekeeper and nanny for a doctor’s family in Waterloo, Ontario, during the Depression. Dr. Gerald Oliver is a handsome philanderer who lives with his neurotic and alcoholic wife, Cammy, and their two children. Lexi soon adapts to modern conveniences, happily wears Cammy’s expensive cast off clothes, and is transformed from an innocent into a chic urban beauty. When Lexi is called home to Saskatchewan to care for her dying mother, she returns a changed person. At home, Lexi finds a journal written by her older brother during the family’s journey from Russia to Canada. In it she reads of a tragedy kept secret for years, one hat reconciles her early memories of her mother as joyful and loving with the burdened woman she became in Canada. Lexi returns to Waterloo, where a crisis of her own, coupled with the knowledge of this secret, serves as the catalyst for her realization that, unlike her mother, she must create her own destiny. Watermelon Syrup is a classic bildungsroman: the tale of a naive young woman at the crossroads of a traditional, restrictive world and a modern one with its freedom, risks, and responsibilities.

When Gillian, the mother of two girls, disappears, she casts each of her daughters upon their own quite separate quests for survival, solace, and redemption. In the wake of her abandonment, the girls find their mother's absence as potent as her presence. While Missy aches for her mother's love, she holds the truth of that love's denial like a smooth, cold stone. Ruby, a few years younger, does not remember their mother and wants her back, no matter the cost. In From Bruised Fell, with lyricism and emotional truth, Finlay-Young details brilliantly a sibling relationship in all its intimacy and complexity, while exploring our capacity to live with and beyond a troubled past.

Jane Finlay-Young

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